To the editor:

The Dalles doesn’t need a dictator! Did Mayor Steve Lawrence read Hugo Chavez’s book “How to be a Dictator?” Mayor Lawrence’s “to do list” published in The Chronicle on Sunday, Sept. 20, follows exactly what Chavez did in Venezuela — longer terms for himself, a vote for more power, veto power, to run the city in the absence of a city manager, and silence the media from asking questions or criticizing policy.